|
Vienna: Forty five nations met on Thursday to weigh whether to lift a 34-year ban on nuclear trade with India, a crucial step towards launching its civilian atomic cooperation accord with the United States.
A green light from the Nuclear Suppliers Group is required for the 2005 deal, which some NSG members and disarmament groups fear will undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to proceed to the US Congress for final ratification.
Critics in the NSG, which makes decisions by consensus only, want to attach conditions to a US proposal for the cartel to do business with India, like an Indian commitment to a nuclear test ban and full-scope UN inspections of its atomic sites.
The deal would rescind a global embargo on nuclear trade for civilian purposes with India imposed in 1974 after India test-detonated a nuclear bomb with Western technology imported ostensibly to develop peaceful atomic energy.
New Delhi, which conducted another nuclear test in 1998, is one of only three nations that has not signed the NPT.
India says it expects to receive a "clean and unconditional" waiver. But US legislation passed in 2006 set conditions for commerce with India including no more test explosions.
This made it unlikely that the US draft waiver to be discussed at the two-day NSG meeting will pass without amendments, diplomats involved said. A second meeting is expected in early September to decide the extent of conditions.
The Bush administration and major allies say the deal will nudge India, the world's largest democracy, towards the NPT fold and combat global warming by fostering use of low-polluting nuclear energy in burgeoning developing economies.
Arms control groups accuse nuclear powers favouring the deal of being keener to reap its potentially hefty commercial and political benefits than to preserve non-proliferation norms.
Conditions under consideration
NSG members are normally secretive about deliberations but New Zealand, among "like-minded" countries sceptical of the deal, suggested proposed terms ahead of the Vienna meeting.
In an Indian newspaper interview on Wednesday, Defence Minister Phil Goff said New Zealand was considering whether the waiver should be void in case of another bomb test.
Other points were whether it should hinge on wide-ranging intrusive UN inspections of Indian nuclear sites and rule out any transfer of uranium-enrichment and reprocessing technologies with military applications, Goff said.
Other countries in the group of sceptics include Ireland, Austria, Switzerland and Norway. Apart from the United States, France, Russia, Canada, Brazil and South Africa appear to be in favour of the deal, diplomats say.
India insists on the right to carry out nuclear tests if national security requires them.
If the waiver does not receive NSG approval next week or at a second meeting next month, it may not be ratified by the end of September, when the US Congress adjourns for November elections. That could leave the deal in indefinite limbo.
|
